Hope I am correct here for a mechanical rigging problem, cause theres no characters involved. I want do a folding wall, that can be used to open or close a terrace for example. Something like this:
http://www.ais-online.de/6/pdcnewsitem/00/97/34/bild2.jpg
http://www.baulinks.de/webplugin/2008/i/2031-solarlux1.jpg

Its tedious to get in a position that looks good, and rotating each element takes quite some time, so I thought I could build a small rig around it to make it open and close with only moving one control.
I tried IKs and locking axis, but I did not find a solution. I however found this great tutorial by Michael Grote that explains how to rig a similar extendable mirror system:
http://www.mgrote.com/tutorials/mirror.php

The system uses some helpers, inverted Z axis and mirrored Z rotations to achieve the effect.
It works great as you can see here:

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/7740/foldingwallproblem.jpg

The big problem though is, that I can not rotate the whole system anymore after I have set it up. This is kinda unflexible and I thought someone might know a solution on how to fix it or maybe even find a more simple and better approach.
Its not a big time saver anyway, but I am very curious how it could be done!

Cheers,
Christoph

MattRennie

04 April 2011, 04:28 PM

WHat about if you make the object you use to compress the doors a child of another object, then if you need to change the angle to doors are facing, you move this parent rather than your door compress object. This should work as long as everything in your rig is not working in world space

wamo

04 April 2011, 04:52 AM

If it's Max, then you got controllers, parent/child relations, global/local spaces .. to get rid of resterictions !

butterbr0t

04 April 2011, 08:20 AM

Hey,
sorry for late answer. Yes it is 3ds Max, I forgot to mention that. The author of the original tutorial, Michael Grote, has been so kind to explain a more simple system to me to rig this. Still, it cannot be rotated after it has been set up, and as far as I understand it, that is because some elements in the system do not inherit any rotation or y-movement of their parent objects. But I dont know how to set it up otherwise. The image explains it in more detail, maybe one of you guys has an idea?

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